“All you have to do is tell them you grew up on a farm” My father always told me that if I want a job, I should tell people I grew up on a farm. Appreciating work started early for me. At five I learned how to milk the cows by hand. I sold the milk to the neighbors and with that money, I bought a baby pig. I raised it for the summer, and sold it in the fall for over $100. I entered kindergarten with over $100 in savings and I never looked back. I always feared loans so I joined the military to pay for college and graduated debt free. While in college studying engineering, I dabbled in the stock market. I also took an internship with my sister’s e-commerce firm Peepers. It was selling sunglasses online. At the time, very few people had ventured out into e-commerce or even really understood the potential of the World Wide Web. But I was hooked. I had a vision of what the company could become. I graduated, used the returns from the stock market to invest in our eCommerce business and to start my new life. |
After graduating, I went on to work for Peepers full time - to the dismay of my professors who told me I was wasting my degree and that the Internet was just a fad. The hours were insane. The first year I only brought in $12,000. I was lucky I still had The Army National Guard to make ends meet.
From Lake Woebegone to the Inc. 500
Peepers grew at exponential rates. Two years after I joined, we hit the Inc., 500 fastest growing companies. We were one of the few e-commerce companies on the list at the time. My vision was realized. Venture capitalists came knocking and we sold the company. Instead of cash, I took stock. The stock took off, and I became a millionaire overnight in my 20s.
Then in 2001 the dot.com bust happened and I was broke. Simply put, I was heartbroken. Not because of all the money I lost. But because Peepers, the company I had worked so hard to grow was in trouble. So I turned to the one thing that was always consistent – Hard Work. We bought back Peepers, and with our knowledge of what the numbers told us we started to work. We renamed the company Thralow, Inc. and by trusting the data Peepers grew even more than it had in the 90s. To add a cherry on top of a beautiful ice-cream sundae I also met my wife. Since then I have successfully created and sold e-commerce companies. I have co-founded over 30 Internet based retail stores including Binoculars.com, Telescopes.com and Peepers.com. Some of my companies have made it on Inc. 500 list fastest growing companies three times, including
(http://www.inc.com/magazine/19991015/14276.html) Peepers Inc. in 1999
(http://www.inc.com/magazine/20051101/) Tharlow Inc. in 2005
(http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060901/) and Thralow Inc. in 2006
and have appeared on Entrepreneurs Magazine’s Hot 100 twice.
It all comes down to the data
I often wonder how a kid from the rural Midwest achieved all of this.
Growing up on a small family farm in central Minnesota never got me any of these jobs, but it taught me the value of working hard and having vision. This outlook prepared me, better than anything else, for the fiercely competitive and demanding digital world that I've been a part of since the mid-90s. I worked hard. I jumped into ventures when they were still growing and profited when they bloomed. More than anything I have always believed in mining the data for answers and clues, hacking your way to growth, and working hard. Even in today’s world of digital marketing where at every turn you face a new technology, networking platform, or fancy tool, it always comes down to the data. If you pay attention, the data will guide you.
Follow me to my Public Speaking Page
From Lake Woebegone to the Inc. 500
Peepers grew at exponential rates. Two years after I joined, we hit the Inc., 500 fastest growing companies. We were one of the few e-commerce companies on the list at the time. My vision was realized. Venture capitalists came knocking and we sold the company. Instead of cash, I took stock. The stock took off, and I became a millionaire overnight in my 20s.
Then in 2001 the dot.com bust happened and I was broke. Simply put, I was heartbroken. Not because of all the money I lost. But because Peepers, the company I had worked so hard to grow was in trouble. So I turned to the one thing that was always consistent – Hard Work. We bought back Peepers, and with our knowledge of what the numbers told us we started to work. We renamed the company Thralow, Inc. and by trusting the data Peepers grew even more than it had in the 90s. To add a cherry on top of a beautiful ice-cream sundae I also met my wife. Since then I have successfully created and sold e-commerce companies. I have co-founded over 30 Internet based retail stores including Binoculars.com, Telescopes.com and Peepers.com. Some of my companies have made it on Inc. 500 list fastest growing companies three times, including
(http://www.inc.com/magazine/19991015/14276.html) Peepers Inc. in 1999
(http://www.inc.com/magazine/20051101/) Tharlow Inc. in 2005
(http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060901/) and Thralow Inc. in 2006
and have appeared on Entrepreneurs Magazine’s Hot 100 twice.
It all comes down to the data
I often wonder how a kid from the rural Midwest achieved all of this.
Growing up on a small family farm in central Minnesota never got me any of these jobs, but it taught me the value of working hard and having vision. This outlook prepared me, better than anything else, for the fiercely competitive and demanding digital world that I've been a part of since the mid-90s. I worked hard. I jumped into ventures when they were still growing and profited when they bloomed. More than anything I have always believed in mining the data for answers and clues, hacking your way to growth, and working hard. Even in today’s world of digital marketing where at every turn you face a new technology, networking platform, or fancy tool, it always comes down to the data. If you pay attention, the data will guide you.
Follow me to my Public Speaking Page